McDonald’s and Burger King targeted by Evangelical boycott for being too liberal
Signs for McDonald’s and Burger King in The Hague, Netherlands. (Yuriko Nakao/Getty)
A Christian watchdog is urging people to abandon McDonald’s and Burger King in favour of Wendy’s, as they score too highly on equality.
Both McDonald’s and Burger King achieved perfect ratings on the Human Rights Campaign’s corporate equality index, a benchmarking tool measuring LGBT+ inclusion.
Normally this would be a cause for celebration – but not for the evangelical consumer group 2nd Vote, which is now calling on customers to boycott the multinational fast food chains.
Claiming to be America’s “Conservative watchdog for corporate activism,” 2nd Vote has a rating system of its own, and surprise surprise, LGBT+ inclusion does not score highly.
Their scale ranges from 1.00 for “liberal” to 5.00 for “conservative”. At 2.67 and 1.33 respectively, Burger King and McDonald’s are far too progressive for their liking.
“Although Burger King shares having a score of 100 from the HRC, McDonald’s is far worse, with various donations and sponsorships with leftist organisations on their record,” the group warns.
“Both should be avoided whenever possible.”
McDonald’s and Burger King ‘should be avoided whenever possible’
“By putting big business on watch through our extensive research on the most important issues of the day, our mission is to expose the corporate influence on matters of culture and policy and turn the tide on the attacks on conservative values and principles,” 2nd Vote loftily claims.
With this in mind they’d much prefer you spend your precious Christian dollars at Wendy’s, whose 3.33 score puts them in safer “neutral” territory.
In explaining their scores, 2nd Vote retells the story of how Wendy’s was founded, saying the brand “got its start as a product of inspiration” based on Christian family values.
They note that Wendy’s philanthropy “has taken a positive turn” in recent years, praising donations totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars to Catholic charities.
Even so, Wendy’s isn’t quite conservative enough for 2nd Vote: like McDonald’s and Burger King the chain also has a perfect rating from HRC and a pesky “progressive” company culture to boot.
“This kind of contradiction certainly calls for consumer input, so be sure to let Wendy’s know that they still have a ways to go and improvements to make,” they add.
But in their eyes Wendy’s is still a lot better than the LGBT-inclusive competition, which has “no issue playing on the liberal side of the fence”.
Unfortunately for 2nd Vote, the two playing on the liberal side of the fence have a combined net worth of $176 billion – so their bigoted boycott is unlikely to be a blip on their radar.
